Parliament (Amendment) Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I had the privilege of listening to my hon. Friend when he made a very powerful speech introducing that Bill under the ten-minute rule. Nothing in my Bill cuts across or undermines anything in his Bill, which I hope will make swift progress when it comes before the House.

The Government’s argument against clause 2 of my Bill is given in paragraph 91 of today’s Command Paper:

“There is no immediate need to resolve this issue, since the provisions relating to a reduced number of MPs will not take effect until 2015. The Government therefore intends to reflect on the arguments made during the passage of this Bill”—

the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill—

“and set out its plans once there is greater clarity on the composition of the second Chamber, including how many Ministers could be drawn from there.”

It seems as though the Government are moving in the same direction, but clause 2 of my Bill would be a bit more of a nudge in that direction. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to confirm that the matter will be resolved during this Parliament. I certainly remain concerned about that.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Government and now the Boundary Commission are pressing on speedily with reviewing the legislature. Indeed, the Boundary Commission has, also today, published its new electoral quotas and confirmed the numbers of seats for each of the countries in the United Kingdom. It has also said that it intends to produce its provisional recommendations this autumn. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if the Government are pressing on so quickly with the reduction in the legislature, they should at the same time look at the Executive?

[Mr Chope]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman completely. This is very important because we do not want the issue of how large the Executive will be to be left to the Executive to decide after the next general election. I think that the balance between the size of the Executive and the size of the legislature should be for the legislature to decide. If we are to have a smaller legislature, we need to impose a smaller Executive well in advance of the next election.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to speak to the Bill, which has many interesting features and merits. It originates in its recent form from a new clause that was proposed to the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. [Interruption.] Yes, it is now an Act. I am being heckled already, which does not bode well for the rest of these proceedings.

Many of my right hon. and hon. Friends and I voted for that new clause, which was moved by the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on 25 October last year. Speaking for the Opposition on that occasion, my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said:

“if the Government plan to cut the number of seats in the House of Commons and do not plan to cut the number of Ministers, surely that will increase the influence of the Government—the Executive—over Parliament. I wholeheartedly support the argument that the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) made this evening.”

Indeed, he added quite eloquently that

“if we are going to cut one group, we should cut the other. That is entirely in line with the new clause.”—[Official Report, 25 October 2010; Vol. 517, c. 114-117.]

Unfortunately, despite the assistance of the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and a number of his colleagues, that new clause was defeated by 241 votes to 293, and it led the next day to his proposing his ten-minute rule Bill, in which he commented on the Government’s attitude towards the new clause and, indeed, his Bill. I found it quite distressing to read that he talked about his hon. Friends who supported the new clause being

“dragged away to the Whips Office to be dealt with.”

I am glad that that sort of thing would never happen in the Labour party.

I realise that the Bill would go further than the original new clause, but the spirit of that new clause is in the Bill. If changes are to be made to the legislature—we strongly disapprove of those changes—it is only right that we address the issue of the Executive at the same time, and I note in reading the Library paper on limiting the number of Ministers and the size of the payroll vote that, over the past 13 years, Government Members have made several attempts to do so. Whether it is significant that they made those attempts when they were in opposition I do not know, but they include figures as illustrious as the current Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

While the hon. Gentleman is developing his point, will he include in his remarks the view that the Labour party took when it was in government about those attempts to shrink the Executive?

[Mr Slaughter]

The Minister is tempting me, and we only have relatively few minutes left. I am sure that the House would wish to hear the Government’s response to the hon. Member for Christchurch, so I will not go through the list of attempts and Bills and the response to them, as I am not sure whether that would profit us much. I thought that it would be uncontroversial to say that the hon. Gentleman is following an honourable tradition of Government Members who have addressed this issue. I, like him, would be surprised if the Minister does not warmly welcome the Bill and, indeed, say that it has the Prime Minister’s support.

This certainly is not the time to revive the discussions about the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, save to say that the basis of that shoddy constitutional legislation and compensatory gerrymander was a tawdry deal done between the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives when they asked, “How many seats are we getting off you? How many seats are we going to take off them?” But that Bill had, as all such pieces of cloak and dagger legislation are likely to have, consequences, whether intended or unintended. When the boundary commissions for the four constituent countries publishes their target seats, excepting the little favours being done to Liberal Members in the north of Scotland and Conservative Members in the Isle of Wight, it is likely that we shall have reduced numbers, and the necessary measures for that are to be rushed through in great haste, so it seems only fair and logical that the issue of the Executive is addressed at the same time.

I referred to the speech that the hon. Member for Christchurch made on his ten-minute rule Bill on the subject, when he alluded not only to the overall reduction in the legislature—that is, this House—but to the plans by the Government to go on increasing the number of Conservative and Liberal Democrat peers. By the hon. Gentleman’s estimation, that would mean that it was the coalition’s

“policy to increase the number of Members of the House of Lords by no fewer than 250, which is absolute lunacy”—[Official Report, 26 October 2010; Vol. 517, c. 201-204.]

Again, it is a method of increasing by unstraightforward measures the influence that a party or parties have in the two Houses. From the Opposition’s point of view, that seems to be grossly unfair, and the consequences should be addressed.

I could go on a lot longer, but in view of the time, I shall allow the Minister to start his remarks, although I expect that he will not finish them today. It would be useful for him to say why he would not be prepared at least to allow the Bill into Committee so that we could have an open discussion about the power, the role and the size of the Executive, as he and his colleagues forced the House to have about the legislature.